1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to an operation device, an operation method, and an image forming apparatus including the operation device.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus such as a multifunction peripheral having a copy function is used in a lot of output manners such as output in office use, output of a designed layout, and output to a paper sheet with a specific size, not standard sizes.
However, in order to obtain desired output in such output manners, a user firstly performs a copy, checks a default print position, and manually changes a position of a document so as to output the document image at a desired position if the default print position is not proper. Therefore, it is easy to occur waste of a paper sheet due to such a copy error.
Further, when a user can not (or does not want to) perform draft printing, for example, when the user uses a specific paper sheet, the user performs draft printing on a substitute paper sheet and therefore, the user may not obtain a desired output, because another specific paper sheet is not available for draft printing before printing on the specific paper sheet.
Furthermore, if a user performs printing with a document size and an output paper sheet size of which a combination is not general but familiar to the user, the user has to change the setting for using the combination every time.
To solve such problems, for example, an image forming apparatus puts and displays an image to be copied on a recording medium in order for a user to confirm a result of image forming in advance. Further, another image forming apparatus performs magnification adjustment for an image to be copied, displays a laid-out position relation between the image to be copied and a recording medium, and generates a copy image to be outputted.
However, in the aforementioned apparatuses, it is not possible for a user to position a document image on a desired recording medium in a desired layout and check the positioned document image itself. Further, even if it is possible to adjust a recording medium, a document image, and its output position in a certain manner, there are no ways to register the combination of them, and therefore, even when a user performs output of different document images in a same layout plural times, the user has to input the setting every time of the output.
To solve such problems, an image forming apparatus includes an image scanning unit, an image memory, an image recording unit, an operation unit, a display unit, and a control unit; and the operation unit includes a confirmation-start input unit to start an action for confirmation of a position relation between an output paper sheet and a document image, and a position-change input unit to change the position of the document image. In this image forming apparatus, on the basis of an operation to the confirmation-start input unit, the control unit stores image information obtained by the image scan in the image memory, generates an output image by putting an image of the image information on an image of a selected recording medium at a position according to the position change, and controls the display unit to display the output image. It is described that therefore a user can properly and quickly output a document image to be outputted at a desired position on an output paper sheet to be used.
Further, an image copying apparatus includes an image inputting device which converts an image on a document to an image signal; an image outputting device which outputs the converted image signal onto a paper sheet; a display unit which displays an image; and a control device which control the whole. In this image copying apparatus, the control device includes a preview screen display unit which displays the image on the document on a preview screen of the display device; and a layout screen display unit which specifies any area on the preview screen, performs enlargement, reduction, or rotation of the specified area, and performs a layout edit action indicating a printing position on a layout screen of the display device. It is described that therefore when an image obtained by combining plural document images is formed on a paper sheet, some works such as cut-and-paste and copying again are not required, and consequently the image copying apparatus enables to gain work efficiency and copy image quality.
Further, another image forming apparatus displays a preview image on a display unit, and the preview image indicates an image forming status of a document image scanned by an image scanning unit. This image forming apparatus includes an operation unit which receives an action instruction; and a control unit which displays the preview image on a medium frame of an image forming medium, and performs enlargement or reduction of the preview image in accordance with a movement of a preview image frame of the preview image when the operation unit receives an action instruction of the movement. It is described that therefore a user can intuitively adjust magnification of enlargement or reduction of an image formed on an image forming medium, and can easily perform image forming at a desired position on an image forming medium, and consequently the user can easily perform image forming on an image forming medium for an image obtained by enlarging or reducing only a desired part of the document image.
Although the aforementioned apparatus enables a user to input magnification (vertical magnification or horizontal magnification) of image data of a document, namely a size (a vertical size or a horizontal size), the input may result in image deformation of the image data of the document and low image quality due to the magnification change.
Further, since in general the changed preview image is not displayed in the magnification change (the size change) of the image data of the document, it is hard for a user to intuitively image a printed matter obtained after the change. For example, if a user sets an enlargement continuous shooting in which an enlarged document image is formed on plural combined paper sheets, it is very hard for the user to image a printed matter obtained after the change.
The setting of enlargement continuous shooting is an effective function when a size of a document image is set to be larger than a predetermined paper sheet size, but most users do not know enlargement continuous shooting in advance, and therefore enlargement continuous shooting is not effectively utilized.